Interviews

Chris Hecker on the Technology of Spore

GameSpy: When Will Wright talked about development of Spore, he said there was a constant creative tension between the "cute team" and the "science team" regarding the look of the game. Where did you fit in? What kinds of things do you enjoy building?

Chris Hecker: Chris Trottier and I founded the "cute team" really early on, mostly as a joke and reaction against Will and art director Ocean Quigley, who we called the "science team" to tease them. They would show these prototypes that looked exactly like looking at a petri dish through a microscope, and some of us would look at it and say, "yuck". The final game we shipped split it right down the middle so the creative tension there turned out to be healthy; you can look at the Sporepedia and see really gross monsters, and silly cute unicorns, and everything in-between.

GameSpy: What features did you cut from the design of the game this time around that you hope to revisit in the future? Clothing? Fur?

Chris Hecker: We had fur for a while, so I'm sure that'll come back at some point. Some early skinpaint prototypes supported emissive textures as well (meaning the creatures could light up at night like a firefly), which was cool and I hope will make a comeback. Maybe if we bring underwater civilizations back...glowing fish creatures would be cool! For clothing, it's been interesting to watch, because we initially thought about it and punted, because it's so amazingly hard for arbitrary creatures, but then the tribal, civ, and space accessory editors (the editors for hats and armor and decorations on your creatures in the later games) actually let players make clothing piece by piece, and it works great. So, the lesson there is: when faced with a really hard technical problem, just punt it to the players and they'll do a better job than you could have anyway!

GameSpy: Thanks for taking the time to chat and congratulations again!

Chris Hecker: Thanks, it's been a long road, and now we get to see what people do with it!